But all Earl Eyvind said was, “If you wish disaster upon your former husband, my sweet, the surest thing to do is let him go north and find it. That the Rulers have crossed the Bizogot plain in one campaigning season, that they have invaded the Empire, clearly shows anyone who stands against them is unlikely to stand for long.”
His words held more truth than Hamnet Thyssen might have wished. Hamnet wanted to beat the Rulers, not to throw himself away as so many Bizogots – and, now, a Raumsdalian army – had done before him. Whether he could do what he wanted was a different question.
With Eyvind Torfinn’s help, Gudrid saw that, too. She sent Count Hamnet one of her poisonously sweet smiles. “All right,” she said, and then, “All right,” again, her soft red lips and moist tongue giving the words a lewd caress as they escaped. “Sometimes the worst you can do to someone is to give him what he thinks he wants and then stand back and watch him ruin himself with it. If you want to play the hero going after the Rulers, be my guest. I won’t tell Sigvat to stop you. I’ll just laugh when you come back after you’ve made a fool of yourself. So will everyone else.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Hamnet said. “I’ll have to do my best not to make a fool of myself, then, won’t I?”
Gudrid’s laugh was loud and rich. “But darling, we all know your best is nowhere near good enough, don’t we?”
He shrugged. “All I can do is all I can do.”
“This is true of all of us,” Eyvind Torfinn said. “For myself, I think doing our best against the Rulers is more important than anything that has faced the Empire for many, many years. I am so convinced of this that, if I see anyone operating on a contrary principle, I shall feel compelled to change my will.”
The Bizogots, even the Bizogots who spoke Raumsdalian, might have followed his words, but they didn’t grasp the thought behind those words. Hamnet Thyssen did. And so did Gudrid. If she kept trying to turn Sigvat against Hamnet, Eyvind would cut her off after he died. Maybe she could get around that, but it wouldn’t be easy. She looked daggers at him. He smiled in return, which did nothing to reassure her.
She put the best face on things she could: “If dear Hamnet wants to go north and kill himself, he’s welcome to for all of me.”
“Thank you,” he said.
Marcovefa set a hand on his arm. “You do what you do. It will be all right. I will help,” she said.
“Good. Thank you, too,” he said.
Gudrid laughed again. “Your lovers get more barbarous every time, sweetheart. The next one will be a jungle ape.”
“No, you taught me all I need to know about those,” Hamnet replied. “Besides, she’s not a lover – only a friend. Not that you would know much about friends, or what they mean.” Gudrid bared her teeth at him. He thought his shot actually went home. That wouldn’t be a first, but it didn’t happen very often, either.
XVIII
Sigvat II dithered two more days before sending Hamnet Thyssen the orders he wanted. Hamnet wondered whether Gudrid was trying to talk the Emperor out of it in spite of Eyvind Torfinn’s warnings, or whether Sigvat simply disliked and distrusted him that much. The nobleman swallowed a sigh: either one seemed possible.
At last, though, a palace servitor fetched the required parchment to Eyvind Torfinn’s home. Count Hamnet unrolled it to make sure it was what it was supposed to be. He didn’t need Ulric Skakki to warn him against going north with a document he hadn’t examined, a document that was liable to order any officer who read it to arrest him and kill him on sight.
The servitor only waited impassively while Hamnet read through the parchment. It was, in fact, everything he’d hoped for and more besides. A calligrapher had inscribed it in red and purple ink. It was bedizened with not one but three imperial seals, each stamped into wax of a different color. Sigvat II’s scribbled signature at the bottom seemed almost an afterthought.
And it said everything it should have. It gave Hamnet powers just short of imperial to fight the invading barbarians “said to be known as the Rulers.” All commanders in the north were ordered in no uncertain terms to subordinate themselves and their soldiers and wizards to him. Whether they would obey, and how well, might prove interesting questions. But Sigvat s orders seemed clear enough.
Ulric Skakki read over Hamnet s shoulder without the slightest trace of embarrassment. “What more do you want?” he said when he finished. “Egg in your beer?”
“I want to get moving,” Count Hamnet answered. “Do you think the Rulers are standing still?”
“Tomorrow is soon enough, unless you think they’re going to land on Nidaros with both feet tonight,” Ulric said. “Do you?”
Part of Hamnet did – a large part, too. But he recognized that the Rulers wouldn’t descend on the imperial capital before he could go out and face them. The Raumsdalian Empire was bigger than that. Odds were that the invaders remained in the northern forests. That would be strange country for them, and they probably wouldn’t be able to push their mammoths through very fast.
“Tomorrow is soon enough,” Hamnet agreed – grudgingly, but it was agreement all the same.
“There you go.” Ulric set a hand on his shoulder. “Besides, who knows? Somebody else may go up against them before you get there. Probably will, in fact. If he loses, what will Sigvat think? That he needs you more than ever, that’s what. And if he wins – well, so what? You’re still out of the dungeon, and that’s what really counts.”
A lot of Raumsdalians would have held a decidedly different view of things. For them, a victory in which they had no part would have seemed worse than a thrashing. It would have marked the death knell of their ambitions. Hamnet Thyssen didn’t feel that way, not least because he had few ambitions.
“Well, you’re right,” he said. Ulric Skakki knew him better than most, but looked surprised all the same. The adventurer had his own fair share of hope for himself, and naturally expected other people to have theirs, too.
A little later that day, Audun Gilli came up to Hamnet. “I will go north if you’ll have me,” the wizard said. “I want to do whatever I can against the Rulers.”
There were ambitions, and then there were ambitions. Count Hamnet had hoped to live out his days happily with Liv. That wouldn’t happen now. But did Audun deserve the blame because it wouldn’t? Wouldn’t Liv have taken up with someone else if Audun hadn’t been one of the travelers in the north? Hamnet feared she would have.
“You can come,” he said gruffly. “I don’t love you, by God. Nothing could make me love you. But I won’t sneak up to your bedroll and stick a dagger in you while you’re sleeping, either.”
Audun looked relieved. “Thank you, Your Grace!”
“For what?” Hamnet growled. “Now you’ve got a better chance of getting killed than you would have if I told you to go to the demons. So does Liv, for that matter.”
“Do you really want to see her dead?”
“No, curse it.” Count Hamnet s voice grew harsher yet; he hadn’t imagined it could. Audun, for the most part, wouldn’t have known a hint if it walked up and bit him in the leg. He took this one, though. Bobbing his head in an awkward gesture of thanks, he retreated in a hurry.
Part of Hamnet wanted to get blind drunk after that. He didn’t, though, which went a long way towards proving how serious he was about setting out the next morning. He went to bed, if not sober, then close enough so that he wouldn’t have more than a mild headache come the new day.
His bedchamber was as luxurious as any he’d ever known. A fireplace and two braziers held the cold at bay. His mattress was soft and thick, the furs that lay atop it even thicker. He had no excuse for not sleeping well.
But sleep didn’t want to come. Count Hamnet lay in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling he could barely see. He muttered to himself. When muttering didn’t do anything, he swore out loud. That didn’t help, either. He groped under the bed till he found the chamber pot. After using it, he lay down again. Sleep still stayed away.